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School board to weigh change of focus on graduation

Posted: Friday, October 08, 2004

By Alisa Marie DeMaoalisa.demao@onlineathens.com

The Clarke County School District could focus more on getting diplomas into the hands of students - no matter how long it takes - if school board members accept a proposed change in the district's goals for the 2004-05 school year.

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Board members received a draft proposal for annual goals at a Thursday night agenda-setting meeting. One of the goals carried forward for several years has been to increase the percentage of students who graduate from high school in four years, or to increase the district's graduation rate, which is currently hovering around 50 percent.

Rather than focus on graduation rate, which only counts students who receive diplomas four years after entering high school, the district should be concerned with getting students through high school, even if it takes an extra semester or an extra year, Superintendent Lewis Holloway told board members.

He proposed a discussion at next week's regular monthly board meeting about the possible change in focus.

"I think that it's wrong," he said. "I don't think that this board's and this district's focus needs to be only on students who can graduate in four years ... I think our focus needs to be correct, even though the national focus is not."

Graduation rate is one of the measures used to judge high-school achievement under state and federal accountability requirements, including the federal No Child Left Behind law. Area educators have complained about problems with the way the graduation rate is calculated and about its narrow focus on all students completing high school in four years.

The district's graduation rate also doesn't include students who receive diplomas from Classic City Performance Learning Center, Clarke County's nontraditional high school, Holloway said. The school targets mainly dropouts, along with some students who are struggling academically in the two traditional high schools. Those students who drop out of one of the traditional schools, then return to school at Classic City, count against their home schools, even if they go on to get diplomas at the nontraditional school.

Other goals in the draft proposal for 2004-05 include studying a district-wide plan of discipline and character education, which district staff hope will improve student attendance and discipline as well as teacher morale and retention, and continuing to improve attendance, including an emphasis on parents ensuring students are in school.

"If we want students to improve in school, they have to come to school," Holloway said. "It has to be a priority ... Parents have to indicate that education is important and do their part to get children to school."

In other business, the board of education:

* Announced that the regular meeting for October, to be held next week, is scheduled for Tuesday, rather than Thursday.

* Heard a report from Holloway that a cost estimate for replacing the water-damaged floor of the old gymnasium at Clarke Central High School was about $40,000, while the insurance company had offered a payment of about $15,000 because the floor was about 55 years old. The district will pay the difference.